


Not a Hope

by Estirose



Category: Starman (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-29
Updated: 2010-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:03:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/pseuds/Estirose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's yet another school, yet another cafeteria, and Scott's losing hope that he'll be able to make friends again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, my mind decided to take a quick time out from writing for my Yuletide recipient to write this fic.
> 
> Disclaimer: Hope is mine; the school is kind of not mine, given that I based it on my vague recollection of my own high school, and then moved things around a bit. Scott and his father are definitely not mine.

Another day, another school.

It wasn't exactly as bad as that, Scott grudgingly admitted to himself. Sometimes they could stay in a town for weeks at a time, he could be a normal teenager, or at least as normal as he could be. He could pretend there was nothing wrong in his life.

This time around, their temporary home was an apartment in one of the poorer areas of Sacramento, and his father had gotten a job at one of the papers downtown. And then enrolled him at the local high school, named after somebody named Asa Gray.

Scott didn't really care. It wasn't like he could graduate from the place, after all, with Fox on their tail and all plans of a normal life right out the window.

He'd counted exits when he'd had a chance. There was one out the front door, of course, and the student gate next to the music room. Two near the cafeteria, a round building that dwarfed the equally-similar music building. One out the music building itself, one out the auditorium if he could find it. Most of those were watched or locked, though, and Scott couldn't rely on being able to get out of most of them in an emergency.

But at least it was his second week at school. The teachers weren't that bad, and the librarian was nice. The library, too, was circular, to match the cafeteria and music room, a squat building in the middle of the main quad.

It was stupid how much he had to look at the layout of each school he went to, figuring out the best place to run, where he could dodge, what teachers didn't care and which ones did.

He took his tray and looked for a place to sit down. The cafeteria was like every other cafeteria he'd been in, at any school; people clumped together, talking like there would be no tomorrow; a few, the outcasts, sitting alone, studiously avoiding everyone.

The outcasts, he'd found, sometimes knew best how to get out of there.

He sat down across from a girl eating alone from a paper lunch bag. Her hair was messy and she wore glasses too big for her face. "Hi."

"Oh, hi!" She exclaimed, blinking up at him. "Sorry."

"Is this seat taken?" he could be wrong, after all.

She shook her head wildly. "No, go ahead. I don't usually have anybody sitting near – um, with – me for lunch."

"Yeah, and I just started here a week ago," he said. He hadn't seen her around before, but it was a pretty big school. "Scott Hayden."

"Hope Powell." She reached across the table to shake his hand. "Pleased to meet you. Did you just move to the area?"

"Yeah." He shrugged. "Mom isn't around and Dad's work takes him everywhere, so...."

"I know how that is," she said sympathetically. "I have my mom and my grandparents, but… at least my mom's job stays in one place. Mostly. Sorry."

Scott wondered what she was apologizing for. "It's nothing. Any good fast food restaurants around here?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't eat a lot of fast food, and it's not like I have a lunch pass anyway. Mom packs my lunch. If you want something after school, there's a bunch of them up the street on Florin. A couple of people brag about sneaking out for lunch, but… well, I suppose you could get out really easy via the music building, but...."

"You mean the rest of the place is locked down," Scott said.

"Pretty much." She shrugged. "They never did manage to put a fence next to the rails, but… well, there is a lot of gang stuff going on here. So."

"There is?" Scott asked. It made sense, but… he'd never really seen it. He didn't really want to, either. Leave the wide-eyed stuff to his Dad.

"Yeah. We have major Bloods and Crips problem here. I'm surprised it isn't worse, but. Well, you don't see it. Or at least I don't, but I'm Academy of Science, so the only time I get to see anybody outside of it is between periods and at lunch."

He'd heard of that. It had something to do with a lot of math and science courses, and if he'd been able to take it, he would. "Do they cover astronomy?"

"Not really. I'm taking Physical science this year, then I've got Chemistry, Biology, and Physics," she said. "I kind of want to take Astronomy at one point, but they don't offer it here. I'll have to wait until college."

"That's not too bad." At least he wasn't missing too much. "You've got a lot of classes?" It was a complaint everywhere he'd gone, that everybody had too many classes.

"Computer science classes, and math classes, drafting, and the ordinary stuff like English and Social Studies. I take German, too." She was ticking them off on her fingers. "I had Speech and Logic last semester and absolutely hated it."

Scott felt a pang of envy as she talked so casually about her classes. He would have enjoyed them, but there was no way he'd get into the program, and no way he'd be able to stay the entire four years. Science was the cool part of school, whenever he could go. "Tough classload, huh."

"I'm almost afraid to ask what an ordinary class schedule looks like. I take periods 0-6 and I'm wiped when I get to Pre-Algebra in the mornings." She grinned.

"That starts at 7, right?" He was sure that the school's literature had said something about that. He could easily imagine getting up that early, but then again, he was used to suddenly having to leave in the middle of the night. If things had been normal, he'd probably be like her – not wanting to get up early.

"Yeah. I like it better than having to take 7th, and Mom likes it because it fits her schedule so she can pick me up in the afternoons. You, your Dad pick you up?"

"Not really," Scott said. "He trusts me with the key." Neither of them really had a choice. With his father's odd hours and everything, he had to be able to get home without a car or a bike. Dad had the car, after all, and bicycles didn't last very long when they were on the run. Cars didn't either, but at least they had one, for the moment. Sacramento had to be one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly cities he'd ever been to.

"So, you're latchkey. I'm lucky, between Mom and my grandparents I don't have to be. Even if my grandma has to pick me up sometimes."

Her expression was sympathetic, but then again, there was a lot going on about latchkey kids; nobody wanted to be one.

But then again, nobody probably wanted his life, either. Nobody wanted to spend one week in one place, one week in another, keeping an eye out for a government agent that didn't ever give up because he believed that you were genuinely a threat to the planet.

Hope, with her quiet, middle-class existence, didn't understand that. But he didn't say anything about that. He couldn't tell, and he doubted she ever wanted to know.

"So, what's your Dad do?" she asked. "I hope that's not too personal…."

Scott forced himself to shrug. "He's a photographer at one of the papers downtown."

"Bee, or Union?" she asked. "My mom gets the Bee…."

"The Bee, I think," Scott said, trying to think of what paper it was, this time. They traveled so much that the papers and the magazines tended to blur together. "I lose track."

"I know how that is," Hope told him. "Mom's told me like a zillion times what she does, but all I know is that she works for the State." She gave him a wry grin.

"Yeah, well…." He didn't want to talk anymore, but he covered it up with a shrug. "So, fun places to go here?"

"Um, the library, and I like the Crocker," she said. "And sometimes the mall. I don't go out much if I don't have to. It's not like I know anybody who wants to hang out with me, anyway."

He'd known girls like her, but it didn't help much when what he really wanted was to actually do something fun. "Amusement parks?"

"Um. Funderland?" She scratched her head. "That's down by the Zoo, and fun too. It's got several rides. Otherwise, I can't think of anything. Florin mall down the way has an arcade, if you like those... I like playing Burger Time, myself."

"I might try those, thanks." It was, he though, probably the best advice he'd get from the apparently painfully shy girl.

The bright smile she gave him made him wonder how many people she did talk to, and how many bothered to talk to her. "Have you ever been overseas?" she asked. "In your travels, I mean. Since your Dad's a photographer."

"Not really," he answered. "Dad was in Mexico for a few hours, but I've never left the States."

"I've been to England, myself," she said. "My family thought I should experience another culture, so we got to housesit for a month. It was really fun, and funny, because the dairy guy came to your door. Plus, we had the royal wedding, well, they had the royal wedding while we were there. And I like their spelling better, too."

"Wow," Scott told her. He'd never been on an adventure like that; probably never would, if Fox had his way. "That does sound like fun."

"It so was," she agreed. But she didn't say anything more, and he didn't have anything more to say, so they finished their meals in silence.

"Hey, catch you sometime," Scott said, getting up. She may not have been very helpful, but she was nice, and sometimes it maybe didn't hurt to have friends like that.

If anything, her smile became even brighter. "Let's do lunch!" she said, rising from the table.

He smiled back. It was the only thing he could do.

* * *

"So, did you make any new friends?" his father asked that evening, looking up from inspecting one of his camera lenses.

"Um, sort of." He wasn't sure whether to call Hope a "friend"; he wasn't sure he was ready to call anybody "friend" anytime soon, not with what had happened so many times. "I had lunch with a girl at school."

His father would probably find her fascinating, but he wasn't really interested in introducing her to his father. There was only so much ignorance and innocence he could take at one time, and Hope, like his father, seemed innocent, naive, sheltered from the world. "Was she nice?" his father asked, apparently having figured out you asked that question in social situations.

"Yeah, Dad, she was." Maybe if they stayed long enough, he and Hope might be friends. Or something like that.

But he didn't hold out hope, pardon the pun, because Fox would come. He always did.

And then they'd have to run again.


End file.
